San Diego County residents put their sunglasses back on yesterday and started cleaning up the mess from a storm that set new rainfall records for the region.

The damage from the rainstorm was felt most in the areas hardest hit by last October's wildfires, where barren hillsides turned to mud and cascaded into roads and back yards.

City and county work crews cleared dirt and debris from highways, picked up fallen leaves and palm fronds from the streets and began repairing damaged roads.

"We've got a whole new crop of potholes that blossomed since the rain," said Mona Favorite-Hill, a spokeswoman for the city of San Diego's general services department.

Mostly sunny skies and warmer weather is in store today through the weekend, with high temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s along the coast.

"There's a chance of rain back in the picture starting Tuesday, but nothing like what we saw with this last set of storms," said Steve Vanderburg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "It's not as strong of a storm."

New daily precipitation records were set Tuesday and Wednesday, with Wednesday's .95 of an inch of rain beating a record that had stood since 1979.

At Lindbergh Field, 1.75 inches of rain has been recorded this month, making it the eighth wettest October since record-keeping began in 1850. Areas in the mountains and backcountry recorded 5 to 9 inches of rain from the storm.

Roads closed because of rain were reopened yesterday as crews from the county Department of Public Works worked to remove rocks and mud on streets from Valley Center to Otay Lakes.

With most roads dry again, the number of traffic accidents was down. Thirty-four accidents were reported to the California Highway Patrol from midnight to noon yesterday, compared to 80 crashes during the same period the day before.

The heavy rains caused a 3,000-gallon sewage spill that forced the closure of South Carlsbad State Beach yesterday. The spill occurred at Alga Road and Almaden Lane on Wednesday night. That spill flowed into a storm drain that empties into San Marcos Creek, which in turn empties into Batiquitos Lagoon before reaching the ocean at the state beach in south Carlsbad.

The rain presented yet another challenge for residents trying to rebuild homes destroyed in the wildfires. Bonnie Frede, director of fire recovery in Ramona, said residences in San Diego Country Estates were inundated with mud.

"We have people who have the mountain going into their back yard," she said.

Deena Raver, who is working on fire recovery in Crest, said several houses still in the framing stages were flooded. Teresa Manley, a fire relief coordinator, said one of her main concerns was along Engineers Road in Cuyamaca, where she visited Wednesday.

"Huge hillsides of dirt were just cascading on the road," she said.

In Harbison Canyon, Marilyn Fleming walked through the mud on the construction site for her new home. Fleming had hoped to put in blacktop for a new driveway soon, but the rains gutted out the path her husband had spent months grading.

"The rain came. The ruts came. The mud came," she said.

Hundreds of farmworkers and day laborers who live in improvised shacks in San Diego County's hills and canyons struggled this week as the rain turned trails into mudslides and a swollen stream kept people from returning to their homes.

Many of the campsites along a Carmel Valley stream were abandoned. The immigrants, mostly undocumented and from Mexico, work at the local nurseries and at the tomato fields east of Del Mar.

Their camps are so secluded that few vehicles can reach them.

"How do you think it's going?" asked laborer Alfredo Brito, 30, who was placing a second tarp over his shack.

Representatives from local humanitarian organizations said they are asking the public to donate tarps and plastic sheeting so they can prepare people for the next expected storm.

Antonio Perea, 40, led a group on a two-hour walk to the nearest supermarket. The six men and one woman were covered with mud after walking through the hills.

"We suffer when we have to go and get food," Perea said.

Despite the rain, the five-year drought is still far from over, said Rand Allan, a meteorologist with San Diego County.

San Diego's reservoirs gained an estimated 750 acre-feet of new water through yesterday, said Tedi Jackson, a Water Department spokeswoman. (One acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two average households for a year.) She doesn't expect the figure to rise much higher because the run-off has slowed to a trickle.

But any rain helps plant life and adds to the county's groundwater table, Allan said.